On the Road
Part 3, Chapter 5
Summary & Analysis

LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On the Road, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Freedom, Travel, and Wandering

Society, Norms, and Counterculture

Friendship

Writing

America

Privilege and Prejudice

Summary

Analysis

Sal and Dean hitched a ride along with a tourist couple out of San Francisco with “a tall, thin fag,” in an “effeminate” car that Dean called a “fag Plymouth.” Dean and Sal talked excitedly in the car, first about the musicians they saw the previous night, then about various childhood memories of riding in cars, then about how excited they were to reach Denver.

Now that they’re on the road, Dean and Sal are filled with fresh excitement. While they disdain society and its restrictions, they themselves show their own prejudices here with their offensive descriptions of the gay man driving them.

Active
Themes

In Sacramento, the driver bought a hotel room and invited Sal and Dean up to the room. He propositioned them, and Dean tried to get him to give them money, but he wouldn’t. When they got back on the road, Dean drove for a while, speeding so dangerously that the other passengers were terrified.

Dean has no regard for speed limits or safety—his own or that of his passengers.

Active
Themes

Sal tried to assure the passengers that Dean was a good driver, but they insisted on someone else driving the rest of the way to Denver. Dean and Sal arrived in Denver at last, with an even longer journey ahead of them. Sal says that they didn’t mind this, though, because “the road is life.”

Sal and Dean have much wandering ahead of them. As Sal says, the road is life. This is true both literally—Sal spends most of his life on the road—and metaphorically, as life is itself a kind of journey.